“I believe,” replied the chemist, sulkily vouchsafing the information which he could scarcely longer evade, “that the party you refer to lives in the Ellesmere Road. He did yesterday; but some persons in this world are so dependent on their landlords that there’s no tellin’ what’s going to happen to ’em to-morrow.”
Thanking this very good-natured and remarkably ingenuous chemist for his direction, Holdsworth quitted the shop and walked up the street. He asked a butcher-boy the way to Ellesmere Road, and was told to keep straight on, until he came to a “Methody’s Chapel, ven he’d see a turnin’, vich ’ud be the road he ast for.”
The Methodist Chapel was a good distance off, and as Holdsworth’s pace was slow, he had plenty of leisure for reflection, which was bitter enough; for, strive as he might to waive the chemist’s gossip as mere trade scandal and jealousy, his mind persisted in fastening on it, and turning it about, and coining deep anxiety out of it.
If this Mr. Conway were the drunkard the chemist affirmed him to be, and the pauper too—for the sarcasm about “persons being dependent on their landlords” had not been lost—what kind of life was Dolly and his child leading? He frowned, and felt his hand tighten on the handle of his stick; but a milder persuasion grew in him, and he forced his mind away from the subject.
So bright a morning as it was would bring forth many people; and the High Street was tolerably well filled with pedestrians, and old people in bath-chairs, wheeled along the gutters for fear of the horses, and nurses dragging children by the hand, and waggons, and tradesmen’s traps. The early coach from Canterbury came thundering along the street, the guard blowing his horn and causing house-windows to fly open, and heads to protrude, and a handkerchief, or, maybe, a duster here and there, to be waved in coy recognition of the hand-kissing of certain spruce and finely-attired gentlemen on the top of the vehicle.
But, varied and cheerful as the scene was, Holdsworth had no eyes but for the women and children he met, at whom he darted quick eager glances, which must have sent some of the women tripping along with a sincere conviction that they had met with one admirer, at all events, that morning.
He passed the market-place with its stalls loaded with garden produce, and clean little shops submitting a tempting array of plump fowls, geese, sides of bacon, legs of pork, and strings of sausages; and in about twenty minutes’ time reached the Methodist Chapel, and turned into the Ellesmere Road.
A short broad road, with the sun-lighted country beyond; on either side, small newly-built villas, with now and again a house presenting a more venerable aspect. There was grass in the roadway, and one or two of the villas had placards in their windows. In the front garden of one of the nearer houses an old gentleman, with an inflamed face, and a white hankerchief over his head, was plying a rake. No other person was visible; but, when Holdsworth had advanced a few steps, a woman came out of a gate and approached him. His heart came into his throat, and he stood stock still. She drew near, but she was not Dolly. She glanced at him as she passed, struck, maybe, by his pale face, and the singular mixture of old age and youth which his appearance and figure suggested.
He breathed deeply and walked forward, glancing to right and left of him.
The last house but one on the left was the house he wanted. A brass plate inscribed with Conway’s name and calling was fixed to the iron railings, and over the door was a lamp furnished with blue and red glass.